The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Summary

Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop.

Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity.

This searing and heartwrenching portrait of a young biracial girl dealing with society’s ideas of race and class is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky - Heidi W. Durrow

Reviews

A disturbing book about what a mother does in the name of love and loss and out of hopeless despair. Tragedy fills the life of "the girl who fell from the sky". But also entwined within the fabric of this tale is the identitiy of a mixed race child and the feelings she has coping and dealing with thinking you are different. It is interesting to learn how she evolves into the person she becomes and I was hooked on knowing the outcome from the first page. Also loved how another life that was deeply affected by the tragedy was weaved in and out of the story to make a tightly held together emotional tapestry that left me feeling like there is hope for a better future in store for these children! Great story.

I'm still digesting all the elements of this story. It's quite compelling, and there some wonderful passages. There is also an underlying sense of melancholy, which is not a bad thing, but I think my actual rating would be more like three and a half stars. After a few days of rumination I may get energetic and put a real review on here.

I thought The Girl Who Fell From the Sky was a wonderful portrayal of the identity crisis a lot of young bi-racial people face. When Rachel arrives in Portland to live with her grandmother, she hasn’t been around many other black people. She actually doesn’t even realize that because she appears black, people will think she is black and expect her to act like the black people in her community do. She doesn’t fit in with the black kids at her school because of how she acts and she doesn’t fit in with the white kids because of how she looks. Even her good friend Jesse, an open-minded white boy, doesn’t understand. When someone drives by and yells the n-word at Rachel, he brushes it off, saying, “Don’t mind them.” As if that’s all that needed to be said.The book starts when Rachel is eleven and goes through her teen years. Ms. Durrow does a great job of matching Rachel’s inner monologue to the age that she is in the story. As Rachel matures, so does the way she thinks to herself about her place in the world. The book switches back and forth between first person narration by Rachel to third person narration from the point of view of several other characters. I liked the way this made the story come together. Even though it’s primarily Rachel’s story, we get to delve in the minds of the other characters and find out their motivations and dreams.The Girl Who Fell From the Sky was chosen by Barbara Kingsolver as the winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice. It is truly deserving of such an award.

This was a good book, well written, interesting topic, not exactly the most positive or upbeat book I've ever read but it did address some difficult topics and handled prejudice in a different and thought provoking way. Worth the read!

'The Girl Who Fell From the Sky' is a quick read that follows the life of Rachel after a tragic event in her family. It's interesting and heartbreaking to see how someone would cope with something like this and even how it affects others. There is also a theme of it being impossible to know every detail of a story, even if it is your own. If Rachel had known all of the details to her story, it may have made things easier for her. Some of the sentences made me stop and re-read them a few times, they are so good. One of the characters in 'The Girl Who Fell From the Sky' shares a first name with Nella Larson, the author who wrote 'Passing', a book about strong female biracial characters first published in 1929. Nella of Darrow's book is not as strong as Larson's characters, but meet a similar fate. There is a definite influence from 'Passing' here (and Darrow also mentions a news story she heard that started the idea for writing it). 'Passing' just happened to be another book I read for a Bookcrossing bookray a while back.This book reminds me of Danzy Senna's 'Caucasia', another fantastic book about a girl of mixed race growing up in difficult circumstances (and both books are set only a few years apart in the 70s/80s). If I didn't love 'Caucasia' so much, and was willing to give up my copy, it definitely would have been my choice for the go-along book to the next reader. I'd reccommend it to anyone that liked this book. This also reminded me of Toni Morrison and Edwidge Danticat's writing. I will probably read anything that Barbara Kingsolver gives the Bellwether prize to, as I'm a definite fan of Kingsolver's work. I'm glad I read this one and I'm looking forward to Darrow's next book.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is a the story of a biracial girl who doesn't realize that her skin color and her blue eyes make a difference in the world. It is the 1980s in Seattle when 5th grader Rachel moves in with her black grandmother and aunt after her mother and two siblings fall to their death. Rachel's father, although still living, is not in the picture. Smart and pretty, Rachel navigates her way through a world where people have predisposed ideas about race. If you liked Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye, you will like this beautifully written book.

The story is very interesting, inventive, involved. It keeps you on your toes and you feel for the main gal, Rachel.....but....the story is told from multiple perspectives, and a lot of them are children. I find both these things a bit annoying. I dont want to give to much away and am glad to have read the back after finishing the book, as I feel it gave too much away even there. But, Rachel is a girl who finds herself living with her grandmother under not very nice circumstances. We basically get these circumstances spelled out to us over the course of the book, and the ultimate answer is delivered late. It is not a thriller or a crime novel, but does a good job in keeping you guessing without feeling like you are being teased with tidbits. I found the writing fairly simple, and not in a good way. It came over as too basic for the subject matter being explored (one of the hurdles of writing from the perspective of youngsters?). There is grief, racism, abandonment, violence and more. At times I found it all a bit gratuitous. But (again), the story itself was compelling enough to carry it for me.

Winner of the Belwether Prize for fiction in 2010, this is a nicely executed novel of the no-man's (or woman's) land between racial definitions. The protagonist is a young woman born of a "white" mother and "black" father, a survivor of a family suicide, who struggles to find herself in an environment that seems unfavorable. Using alternate narrators and some chronology shifting, the book is an easy read with some not so easy revelations.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is a hard hitting debut novel that explores several tough subjects including race, substance abuse and domestic violence. Rachel is eleven years old and recovering from a horrible tragedy when the book opens. The book then slowly unveils exactly what happened the day of the tragedy. This is accomplished through multiple points of view as well as switching from past to present. Rachel is intelligent and well mannered but she is struggling with the after effects of a home in which substance abuse and domestic violence were present. I liked Rachel's character overall but was often annoyed with her poor decision making skills. The ending will leave some people disappointed because it isn't neat and tidy but I was pleased that Rachel was becoming stronger. Great book!

Growing up biracial. Pulled a lot from her own childhood, apparently, added a great conflict at the center - good example of exploring a personal issue within/around an intriguing plot. I loved the way she wove the stories of two different children together. My copy had an interview with her at the end, was quite interesting to learn she also grew up with a Scandinavian mother.

Beautiful book--elegant and understated, yet somehow deeply emotional at the same time. Durrow's story is unexpected, sad, and hopeful. Worth all of the accolades it has received. I love how the author took the events of a tragic story she read about in a news paper and intertwined them with her own past to create these characters. An impressive feat of writing and imagination.

Really enjoyed meeting Heidi via Skype with our Book Club. Loved the book. A topic that doesn't seem to be written about much and having a biracial niece, it was a must read for me. Great moving contemporary read. really loved the character development., quick read.

This book was well written, I enjoyed the ease of reading it and beauty was not sacrificed. However, I was disappointed in the ending, as I felt the story was far from finished.Perhaps it is just me, but I find when an author writers a story so similar to their own lives, that it lessens my opinion of their skill. This story touched on many very important topics, and it was worded wonderfully - but then Rachael is Heidi.

This book definitely tells a compelling story I have never read before. So many books have similar themes but this one is unique with all the characters having their own tragic stories which weave themselves into the bigger story of a family in trouble. Durrow interweaves subjects of substance abuse, race, death, women abandoned by men and growing up with multiple difficult and emotional life circumstances and trying to be normal. Durrow tells her story in an upbeat manor allowing the reader to remain optimistic despite the challenging life struggles of each of the characters. I chose to listen to the audio version of this book and enjoyed the narrator and the flow of the story.

Read this book. It's amazing.I fell in love with it as soon as I read the following passage:“The bottle is where everything sad or mean or confusing can go. And the blues--it's like that bottle. But in the bottle there's a seed that you let grow. Even in the bottle it can grow big and green. It's full of all those feelings that are in there, but beautiful and growing too.” Rachel puts all her memories about the tragedy in her life, all her memories of her previous life, into the “blue bottle” inside her. I think we all have a "blue bottle" inside of us that we fill with feelings & memories that are too painful to face on a daily basis or too soon after experiencing them or that we just aren't ready to face yet. The bottle is fragile & can shatter once it begins to crack due to having to face the memories & feelings we have bottled up. The moment that bottle shatters is usually a defining moment in our lives when we figure out who we are & how strong we are.Barbara Kingsolver selected this book as the winner of her PEN/Bellwether Prize. The prize is well deserved. Seriously, read this book.

Audiobook performed by Karen Murray, Emily Bauer, and Kathleen McInerneyFrom the book jacket: Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on a Chicago rooftop. Forced to move to a new city with her African-American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, startling blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. My reactionsI found the book in turns horrifying, moving, disturbing, riveting, and confusing. The story moves back and forth in time, and with multiple narrators. The reader certainly gets the sense of Rachel’s confusion – about her identity, about her parentage, about what actually happened, about who and what she’s supposed to be now. I was moved by Rachel’s predicament. And empathized with her struggles to come to terms with what had happened to her, and to those she loved. The ramifications of one desperate act rippled outward to affect not only Rachel, but her grandmother and the witnesses to the event. All of them were somehow traumatized by that one afternoon on the roof – whether directly involved or not. While the attention is focused on Rachel, some of the supporting characters are equally moving; Rachel’s grandmother, Roger, and Brick are particularly important and I really appreciated the complexity of their characters as written. All told, this is a great debut, and I look forward to reading future works by Durrow. The audio book was capably performed by a trio of talented artists: Karen Murray, Emily Bauer and Kathleen McInerney. The opening of the audio DID tell which of these artists voiced which sections, but I failed to write it down before returning it to the library. I can tell you that one voiced Rachel, one voiced her mother Nella, and the third covered the narration and all other characters. Given the structure of the novel, using different narrators was very effective in helping to keep this listener/reader on track.

I love novels that are told from different characters' points of view. In The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, the author gives us three alternating narrators. Twelve-year old Rachel has survived a terrible tragedy (well, she has survived physically, at least), and her life and her sense of self change drastically when she is sent to be raised by her grandmother in Portland, Oregon. Jamie, the son of a junkie prostitute, has witnessed the tragedy and becomes obsessed with it. Unbeknownst to her, he visits Rachel in the hospital, where he befriends her father. The man tells him a story and makes him promise to tell it to Rachel one day--a promise that pushes Jamie to leave home and change his identity. The third voice, which we don't begin to hear until later in the novel, is that of Rachel's mother, Nella; we hear her only through her brief but painful diary entries.In Portland, young Rachel finds herself trying to understand not only the events leading up to her mother's tragic decision but her own racial identity--or the lack of it. "Light skinned-ed" with blue eyes, she is the daughter of an African-American soldier and a Danish woman (like Durrow herself). Never before has she had to answer the question, "What are you?" But living with her black grandmother and aunt leads others to answer the question for her, and she struggles with the fact that people expect her to choose to be labelled either black or white rather than to be herself, "a story." Durrow's moving novel is finely written, spare and and at times poetic: images of birds, flying, and falling pervade the narrative, almost acting like a framework. The author merges her personal experiences with those of Rachel, making her character's thoughts and feelings all the more believable. While not a story that I want to say that I "enjoyed," I appreciated its artful telling, its fine characterizations, and its illumination of issues that I hadn't really thought about deeply before.

This is a multi-layered story told from varied points of view, as well as from different points in time. Loosely speaking, it's a coming-of-age novel about a girl growing up in her grandmother's house, after a tragic incident takes the lives of her mother & siblings. As she struggles to come to terms with her identity (her mother being Danish, her father being African-American), she discovers that she can't just be herself -- society places her in one category or another because of her skin color. Meanwhile, the reader is gradually enligtened as to the timeline that led up to the family tragedy.I read this on audio, and while I was initially confused in trying to orient time, place, & point of view, I eventually really came to appreciate the format of this story, as well as the story itself. This is a novel that begs for discussion, as it presents several controversial topics. Definitely worth a read.

There was nothing I did not like about this book. It was a gripping read and it is very readable.I like the use of multiple-narrators as I like knowing diffent parts of the story. I like that in this novel some of the narrators are relatively minor characters such as Nella's boss. I also like the use of diaries in novels. So win-win really.The characters were all distinct individuals who fitted into the novel well - no one was over-powering.I didn't give it 5 stars because I was hoping it didn't end there ... I wanted to know what happened next.I do think this would be a great book for using at school with 16 - 18 year olds. Great themes and characters. In saying that, it's not a Young Adult book - it is an adult novel, so don't be put off by my suggestion.I would highly recommend this novel if you like novels where characters search for their identity or for a better understanding of themselves, their lost family and their worlds.

This well-written novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a black US serviceman and a white Danish mother. Growing up in Europe, Rachel and her family had a very different experience with race than they encountered on their return to the US. As the story of how Rachel came to live with her grandmother and aunt unfolds, the terrible central tragedy of Rachel's life is revealed. As Rachel grows up trying to reconcile what she knows about herself and her family with the life her grandmother wants her to lead, she is torn by conflicting demands and the pressures of developing her own self identity. A powerful and moving narrative.

This is a sad but insightful book about the challenges sometimes faced by biracial children, whose parents come from markedly different backgrounds and cultures. It is well worth reading and would be a good candidate for book club discussions.

It's easy to see why there's so much fuss over this novel. Much as Nella Larsen did in her exemplary novel Passing and the novel Quicksand, Heidi Durrow explores both interracial and intraracial racism in a compelling and unique way. Throughout the novel, there are several nods to Larsen (the mother named Nella, the protagonist who is half black and half Danish, the exploration of racial tensions in America when compared with the more colorblind European societies, the epigraph taken from Passing). However, while it's clear that Durrow was inspired by Larsen, there's never any doubt that this novel is Durrow's own. Set in the 1980's, the novel primarily follows the story of Rachel Morse, the only survivor of a tragic accident that claimed her mother, her brother, and her sister. Her father, who serves in the military, is too grief-stricken to take care of her and instead sends her to live with her grandmother in Portland, Oregon. Feeling abandoned and alone, Rachel creates a new identity for herself and tries to cope with her increasing alienation. Having grown up in the more racially tolerant Europe, the biracial Rachel struggles with the sudden realization that she is black--but not black enough. She's taunted for her light skin, her soft hair, and her startling light blue eyes. Her black peers think she's an "Oreo," talking and behaving as if she were white. Her grandmother tries to reshape Rachel's past, obliterating any positive memories she may have of her white mother. As Rachel grows up, she struggles to find acceptance and belonging (looking, as most teenage girls do, in all of the wrong places), confronts being seen as a beautiful object and an exotic curiosity by the men in her life, hopes for a future that may hold more than a secretarial job and a three bedroom house, and unearths the truth about what happened on the day that she and her family fell from the sky. The novel is not for readers who like linear narrative. Instead, it's fragmented into chapters that are told from the varying perspectives of Rachel, Jamie (a boy who witnessed the tragedy and who may be the only remaining link between Rachel and her father), Nella (Rachel's Danish mother who doesn't know how to cope with living in a society that judges her children by their skin color), Roger (Rachel's father), and Laronne (Nella's employer who is left to clean up what's left of the family's belongings and to try to piece together the reasons why the family fell apart). Each character is given a distinct voice and backstory that somehow intersects with Rachel; I could easily believe them to be real people. Because the novel moves from past to present and between these points of view, there are no quick and easy answers and reading often feels like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. However, the end result is a realistic portrayal of how tragedy can destroy a life, but that the resilient can eventually prevail.

Rachel is a young bi-racial girl with a Danish mother and African-American father. She grew up never being persecuted for her race and never knowing she was “different” from anyone else. At age 11, she’s sent to live with her grandma in Portland, OR after a family tragedy leaves her on her own. Suddenly her race is very important to the people around her and she has to come to terms with that. This book didn’t work for me. It’s not bad and I’ve heard some rave reviews, but I just couldn’t connect. The rotating narrative was a bit confusing. First Rachel is telling the story, then her old neighbor Brick, then her mother’s friend Laronne, etc. There’s was a lot going on, but there was little resolved. The book is well-written and deals with some important issues, it just felt hollow for me.

This is a good read - a fast read. The ending seemed a bit abrupt or maybe I just wanted more. This book won the Bellwether Prize for fiction in 2008 and for a first novel that speaks volumes. It's the story of tragedy and triumph of the human spirit, told from the point of view of a mixed race young woman desperately trying to discover herself, which is hard for anyone. But, imagine trying to discover where you are in the dark because all the light was snatched away. Everything was taken away from this young woman and she was left alone to navigate the unfamiliar, truly making a way out of no way. This book takes you on an unimaginable journey of self-discovery. I was sorry to come to the end.